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First, let me state that I know and have read Ridley Scott's position on what is his film. Rick Deckard, according to the film's director, is a replicant.
I have been a fan of Ridley Scott's since his first film as well as being a fan of Blade Runner since the first time I saw it in the comfort of a dark theatre in 1982 and I was hooked the second time I saw it as a double feature showing with Mad Max at the RC Drive In theatre in Fredericksburg Virginia. I was eighteen and enthralled by this addaptation of one of my my favorite novels by Philip K. Dick. But....
Let's look at Blade Runner from a less metaphysical
point of view and look at it from a psychological one. Rick and
Gaff are both cops-- in fact supposedly really good ones that are trained
in psychology and reading people (replicants). Gaff constantly taunts
Deckard with the origami figures; a chicken for when Deckard
says he doesn't want to do wet work anymore, Gaff thinks he's a coward. A man
figure with his dork hanging out which tells Deckard that Gaff thinks
him a fool. Finally an origami tinfoil unicorn showing Deckard that Gaff knows
Deckard's mind as well as his own. They are fellow blade runners. Gaff knows Deckard is trying to reach for
what isn't real, what is unattainable. What better metaphore for the unattainable than the unicorn. Both men think alike
and that Gaff and Deckard both see and use the same image means that they are on the same frequency. Gaff, thinking like Deckard, figures
out where Rachael is. Is she the unicorn? The unattainable? Or is the unattainable the happiness that Deckard seeks after living life as a killer? Ahhh, metaphores.
The hole that lies bleeding in the plot twist of
Deckard being a replicant is that there are too many people that know him.
There would need to be a conspiracy for him to be a replicant
and that would make all the major characters part of the plot.
Tyrell, Gaff and Bryant all in collusion against Rachael and Rick.
If he is a replicant, why can't he defend himself against another
replicant better? If he is a replicant, how long has he really
known Harry Bryant? Can't be more than four years. Get my drift?
The likely hood of Deckard being a replicant is an interesting idea,
but you'd have to explain away alot more than what was given to us
in either versions of the film. The Director's Cut is, in my eyes-- no
more conclusive of Deckard's humanity or the lack there of than the
original theatrical version. In this critic's opinion, Deckard is
still the lonely non-replicant that he was in the book and in the
first film. I wish it weren't that way, but there you are. |
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